Saturday, February 17, 2018

Missing in Action! Toylines That Didn't Make the Cut in 2017

For the past few years I've supplemented my 10 Favorite Toylines
and 10 Favorite Individual Toys with a list called Missing in Action.
The general premise of this list is to look at my list of last year's Top 10 Toylines and determine why some lines present then failed to
return on the current year's list. 2017's top 10 list had six toylines
returning from the 2016 list, meaning that four lines were dropped this
year. I do believe that's one of the highest retention rates for
toylines from one year to the next that I've had on my lists due to the
presence of longer running lines and continuing lines such as Star Wars: The
Black Series, the DC Collectible Designer Series, POP! Star Wars, Marvel
Legends, Super7's M.U.S.C.L.E. reboot, and Mattel's DC Multiverse
line. When looking at the lines that failed to show up again there are
typically three reasons why a line makes this list:

Missing in Action: This is a toyline that gets cancelled, ends, or just doesn't have any releases during the year.

Demoted:
Sometimes a toyline just gets outdone by others. This is less
reflective of the quality of the demoted line and more reflective of the
quality of the line that supplanted it.

Drop
in Quality: This is when a toyline has a severe drop in quality that
causes it to fall from grace. While most toylines get better as they go,
some do indeed get worse and worse due to cost cutting, mismanagement,
and quality control issues.

Let's take a look at the four lines that made the 2017 list after the break...

Since 2012 Kotobukiya's line of DC Comics Bishoujo statues has
alternated between appearing on my top 10 list and appearing on this
list due to the great deal of variation in how many releases the line
sees during each year. This year the line only had two releases which
definitely wasn't enough to earn it a spot on the list. The Katana
statue did make it onto my Best of the Rest list, however, so Kotobukiya
didn't go without receiving any recognition in 2017. I really hope 2018
sees more releases as this is still one of my favorite lines to
collect.

DC Comics Lil' Bombshells by Cryptozoic Entertainment- Demoted

I still really like Cryptozoic's Lil' DC Comics Bombshells line but
the line didn't make my Top 10 list this year for a few reasons. One,
I'm still not sold on the fact that these are $10 "blind boxed"
minifigures. If you're going to offer a mystery product $10 seems to be
too high of a price point for a single figure. Secondly, both the DC
Comics Bombshells and regular DC characters appeared in quite a few
other forms that I just liked a bit more. DC Collectible's Designer
Series offered up eight Bombshells action figures, Mezco's One:12
Collective and Mattel's DC Comics Multiverse both offered up plenty of other
DC Comics action figures, and Jada Toys' Nano Metalfigs line offered up
plenty of inexpensive, diecast metal DC minifigures. I hope to see a
Series 3 from this line still, but it didn't make the list for 2017.

Nightmare Before Christmas ReAction by Funko- Missing in Action!

The official ReAction brand returned fully to the hands of Super7 at
the end of 2016 and at this point it seems like they still do not have
the license to produce further ReAction figures for The Nightmare Before
Christmas, so thus this line is Missing in Action. This is definitely
disappointing as The Nightmare Before Christmas was one of the best
ReACtion lines released by Funko and Super7. While series 1 was good,
series 2 was absolutely incredible with some truly impressive figures in
it. If we could get one more set of figures with at least Lock, Santa
Claus, Dr. Finkelstein, and Igor (along with another random citizen or
two) I think we could call this line complete. Maybe Walgreens or some
other retailer with a dedicated Halloween section would take this as an
exclusive?

World of Nintendo by Jakks Pacific- Demoted

Wait?
Jakks Pacific's World of Nintendo line fell off of the list of my Top
Ten Favorite Toylines? Sadly, yes it did. While Jakks did release some
figures in 2017 they didn't release much. Most releases were simple
repaints and considering Jakks' notoriously poor distribution of this
line I couldn't be bothered to track them down. The Mario Maker version
of Mario was quite nice but I do believe he was the only 2017 release I
purchased. Let's hope that the success of the Nintendo Switch inspires
Jakks to put more effort into this line as there are still a bunch of
characters I would love to see.

What do you think? What toylines did you love last year that went missing or got overshadowed this past year? Let me know!